Read The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) Online
Authors: Robert P. Hansen
The Tiger's Eye (Book 1)
The Tiger’s Eye
Book 1 of the Angus the Mage
Series
By Robert P. Hansen
Copyright 2014 by Robert P. Hansen
All Rights Reserved
Kindle Edition
Special thanks to Ronda Swolley, of Mystic Memories
Copy Editing, for the copy edit, and Linda Foegen of American Book Design for
the cover art and Voltari’s Map.
For my brother Ken.
Robert P. Hansen teaches philosophy at a community
college and writes fiction and poetry in his spare time. His work has appeared
in various small press publications since 1994.
For updates on my writing, visit my blog at:
http://www.rphansenauthorpoet.wordpress.com/
.
Although I seldom use it, you can also follow me on
twitter (
http://twitter.com/frummery
).
Visit my Amazon author page at:
www.amazon.com/author/rphansen
A Bard Out of Time
: a long fantasy poem
accompanied by other fantasy poems.
A Field of Snow and Other Flights of Fancy
:
a collection of light verse and other short poems.
Corpus Colossal
: a collection of all the
poems in the collections published in the spring of 2014.
Last Rites
…and Wrongs: a collection of
macabre poetry.
Love & Annoyance
: a collection of poems
on love and philosophical speculation.
Of Muse and Pen
: a collection of poems on
writing and the creative process.
Potluck: What’s Left Over
: a collection of
poems with no particular theme.
The Snodgrass Incident
: a science fiction
novel in which the crew of
The Snodgrass
travels to Enceladus to
investigate the formation of a new Tiger Stripe.
Worms and Other Alien Encounters
: a
collection of science fiction stories.
1
“Angus?” The voice was distant, filtered through a dense
smothering fog.
“Angus, wake up!” Sharp, cold, impatient. Was the man
anxious? Angry? Maybe it was a gruff woman’s voice, a rotund barkeep rousting a
wayward drunk. Was he a drunk? That would explain the sluggishness.
The voice struck him a ringing clout across his cheek and
ear. His eyes flew open, fluttered, half-closed again.
“What?” he asked, trying to focus on the blurry shape hovering
over him, weaving in and out of his spinning vision. It looked only vaguely
human at first—an oval patch of paleness that gradually coalesced into a pair
of intense, soul-crushing gray eyes full of mock compassion.
“Angus?” The stern voice flowed from the toothless mouth and
consumed everything in its path.
“I’m awake,” he said, trying to blink into focus the
uncertain image looming over him.
“Good,” the voice said, its tone decisive, confident.
“You’re alive.” The voice lingered a bit longer before retreating as if it was
no longer interested in him.
“I am?” he answered, rubbing his stinging cheek and
squeezing his eyes shut again.
He was lying on a cold, hard, smooth surface. He rolled slowly
over onto his left side, took a breath.
Rock dust. Burnt rock dust.
He
braced himself, curled up, and pushed against the stone floor. “What happened?”
he asked as he slid his legs under himself, his right side reluctant to comply.
He managed to settle into a wobbly, lopsided sitting position and rubbed his
eyes. No crusty rheum at the corners; he hadn’t slept long—if he had slept at
all.
“Don’t you remember?” The voice was expectant, as if he were
asking a pupil to answer a simple question, one that should have been learned
long ago.
“No,” he said. “I—”
His brow furrowed as he turned his head and leveled his gaze
at the old man’s midriff. “I can’t remember.” There were several dark brown
pouches—
What could be in them?
—firmly attached to a broad leather belt
of the same color.
Difficult to steal.
The old man’s airy robe was spun
from fine black silk that concealed his hands in the deep folds of its sleeves
and swallowed up his feet in the hem. The dainty fabric was a stark contrast to
the ruggedness of the workmanlike leather belt. He looked up into the steely eyes
of the bald old man, and his chest tightened, collapsing in on his breath. “I
don’t remember anything!” he gasped, his hands fluttering as if he were trying
to capture a wayward breeze.
The old man stroked his anvil-shaped chin, half-concealing
the slight smile threatening to escape from his lips. “Interesting,” he said.
There was no kindness in his dispassionate, inquisitive tone, only curiosity—and
something else.
Satisfaction? Pleasure?
“You remember nothing? Nothing
at all?”
An acrid taste blossomed at the back of his throat. His
chest vibrated with the trembling of his heart, the hesitant urgency of his lungs.
He shook his head. “No,” he gasped, trying to struggle to his feet. But his
right leg was reluctant to support his weight, and he plopped back down, his
tailbone tingling from the heavy impact on the stone floor.
“What happened to me?” he demanded, his voice harsh,
frantic. He squirmed until he had his legs beneath him, and stood up in a
swift, effortless, gliding motion. His eyes fixed firmly on the old man’s stoic
expression. “Who are you?” he demanded, taking a step toward the robed figure. “Where
am I?” he continued, ignoring the erratic fluctuations in his tone, the
uncertainty of his gait. “What have you done to me?” he accused, his voice
rising sharply, threatening to become an incoherent jumble of half-formed words
erupting from his mouth. “
Who am I
?” He cried, grabbing at the old man’s
arm. “
What
—”
The old man’s eyes tightened, dilating until they became a
pair of unforgiving coal-black mirrors. A sudden jolt of energy poured from his
arms and propelled his confused inquisitor backward, leaving him lying in a crumpled
heap on the floor next to the wall.
The old man’s voice was calm, unyielding, eerily soft.
“Under
no
circumstances,” he warned, “is an apprentice to touch his
master without having been given leave to do so.”
He whimpered, thrust his singed fingers into his mouth, and
began sucking on them. Tiny blisters were already sprouting. He blinked through
a film of tears and drew mild comfort from the suckling sound he was making.
Drool dribbled onto his chin, and tears streamed down his cheeks, but they did
little to deter the intense pain shooting through his hand.
The old man’s eyes paled and settled on an implacable gray
as he brushed away the tiny sparks still popping up along his sleeves. He waved
away the smoke and said, his voice almost gracious, “Since your emotional
comportment has been compromised by recent events, I will not pursue the matter
further.” The old man paused and his gray stare pierced through the watery haze
as he added, “
This
time.”
He huddled up against the wall like a chastised child for a
long moment before a defiant streak hidden deep within him forced him to lift
his head and drop his singed fingers onto his lap. He stared back, gritted his
teeth, and said nothing.
“As for your questions,” the old man continued, smoothing
the front of his robe, “I am Voltari, Wizard of Blackhaven Tower. You are
Angus, my halfwit apprentice. You have just failed a very simple spell with
near-fatal consequences. Tomorrow, after you have recovered, we will begin remedial
instruction in the use of the magical safeguards you should have mastered
months ago. For now, return to your chambers and recuperate.”
Voltari reached out with a hooked finger, tugged on
something that wasn’t there, and vanished.
“But,” Angus wailed into the vacuum left behind, “I don’t
know where my chambers are.” He looked around the arched smoke-colored granite
walls that tapered to a domed point above him. They were streaked with soot and
pockmarked with divots, but there were no doors.
“Or how to get there,” he added.
He spent over an hour looking for an exit before he finally
gave up and sat down against the wall, hoping that this Voltari fellow—his
master?—would come back, and wondering who he was….
2
Angus stood before the smooth surface of the polished gray-white
granite and stared at the distorted image staring back at him. Was he a
stranger? A friend? The eyes were narrow—probably because he was squinting—and
light-colored. Blue? Hazel? Gray? Brown? He couldn’t tell. It was a strange
image, one that was both familiar to him but somehow completely alien. The hair
was collar-length and dark. He knew it to be black from when he had trimmed it,
but in the image looking back at him, it seemed to be dark brown.
There was a scar near his left ear, a thin crescent hidden
beneath his hairline. Had he nicked himself shaving? Had it been a near-miss
from a sword or knife? An accident with magic? He ran his finger over the
little ridge of flesh, and frowned. Had someone tried to slit his throat? It
was the right angle, but too high to slice through the jugular or carotid. A
garrote? Would he ever know? He ran his gaze over the rest of his face, looking
for other scars, other suggestions that he had had a past before waking up in
Voltari’s practice chamber so many months ago.
But there were none. There were never any clues to his past,
his identity.
His beard and moustache were new; they were symbols of who
he
is
, not who he
was
. They were little more than shadows in his
reflection, but he had painstakingly nurtured them, cultivated them, trimmed
them. Had he ever had a beard before? He didn’t think so—at least, he didn’t
have one when he had first awoken. But how would he know? He could remember
nothing
from before the accident. Voltari didn’t have a beard. Angus thought a wizard
ought to have a beard, a long flowing one that tickled his belly. But his
barely escaped his chin. Still, it was a fresh start, a new face for a new life.
If only he could convince himself of it.
But was it
really
a new face? If his memory came
back, would he recognize it? Was it the past looking back at him, or the
future?
The most striking part of his appearance was his age. He had
to be in his early thirties, maybe even older, but wasn’t that a bit too old to
be an
apprentice
? He felt much younger than that, though, and here he
was in Voltari’s tower trying to relearn the magic Voltari said he had already mastered.
Why couldn’t he remember any of it? Even the most basic aspects of magic had eluded
him completely until Voltari’s remedial instruction. He hadn’t even been aware
of the magical threads permeating everything around him and within him until
Voltari had shown them to him. Still, some of what he was learning did seem
natural to him, and he was advancing rapidly in his studies. At least,
he
thought he was; Voltari never seemed to be satisfied with his progress.
And what about his clothes? They were far from the typical
garb of a wizard’s apprentice. His under-tunic was simple enough, but not the
tunic covering it. It was sewn from supple leather reinforced with a thin layer
of chain links and padding. It had nearly a dozen loops for securing
who-knows-what (he didn’t know) to it. Hidden pockets…. It had been repaired many
times, by the look of it. His trousers were also oddly constructed for a wizard.
They looked like normal trousers, but when he put them on, they were skin-tight
and the fabric stretched and flexed with every move he made, no matter how
slight it was. Though they were light-weight, they provided ample warmth and
protection—and more pockets, most of them hidden and empty. The few that
weren’t empty held a handful of gold coins and a small collection of garnets,
which he knew would come in handy if he left. Still, why did he have only one
outfit of this sort? Where had it come from? It didn’t fit in with all the
dingy, gray, homespun wool robes of a wizard’s apprentice that he had found
waiting for him in his chambers. And why did this peculiar outfit appeal to him
so much? Why did it feel so…
natural
? And why did the black robe Voltari
had given him a few days earlier feel so
wrong
? It was beautifully
crafted, woven from black silk just like his master’s, and the threads of the
cloth intermingled with the magical threads contained within him when he put it
on. While he wore it, it gave him an acute, spider-like awareness of his
surroundings and an uneasy sense of invulnerability. It was a perfect wizard’s
robe, replete with copious pockets positioned in all the right places for
casting spells, but it made him uncomfortable, as if he were wearing someone
else’s skin.
Voltari will be angry when he sees I’m not wearing it today.
…
He reached out for the image and let his fingertip slide
down the smooth stone reflection. His nose had been broken at some point,
perhaps several times. It started out narrow, bulged out where the breaks had
occurred, and then narrowed again to a softly rounded point. Someone had set
it, though, and it didn’t impede his breathing. “Who are you?” he whispered to
the image. “What did you do?”
But the image didn’t answer him. He shook his head and
sighed. It did no good to speculate, and Voltari wasn’t going to provide him
with any answers. The wizard was completely dismissive, aloof, and uncaring.
“How long have I been here?” he muttered, thinking back through the months
since his rebirth. “Voltari tells me I’ve been his apprentice for years, but he
treats me almost like I’m a complete stranger. Which one am I?”
Both,
his
image seemed to answer. A frown caused his reflection’s moustache to protrude.
The
one he knows and the one he doesn’t.
Angus sighed. “There’s no point dwelling on it,” he muttered.
“I’m his apprentice, and that’s all that matters now.”
To Voltari
….
